Networking architectures have grown increasingly complex in communications environments. In addition, the augmentation of clients or end users wishing to communicate in a network environment has caused many networking configurations and systems to respond by adding elements to accommodate the increase in networking traffic. Communication tunnels or links may be used in order to establish or to authenticate an entity via a network, whereby an end user or an object may initiate a tunneling protocol by invoking a selected location or a designated network node. The network node or selected location may then provide a platform that the end user may use to conduct a communication session.
As the subscriber base of end users increases, proper routing, effective authentication, and efficient management of communication sessions and data flows becomes even more critical. In certain cases, scalability and centralized control may be achieved for a corresponding network, but only at the expense of time and performance. In other scenarios, performance may be acceptable, but only at the expense of restricted scalability and the lack of management control. Accordingly, the ability to provide an effective mechanism to optimally authenticate an end user/mobile terminal, while offering acceptable scalability and management features, provides a significant challenge to network operators, component manufacturers, and system designers.